Saturday, March 02, 2013

The Sequester: The Sky Has Fallen!

They actually went ahead and let it happen. GOOD.

I was sure both sides would come swooping in at 11:59 last night and announce breathlessly that a deal had been reached; our heroes had saved the day. [swoon] Maybe both sides have finally figured out that the public is getting bored with these phony “crises” being created and then magically resolved at the last minute.

Everyone was warned that these automatic budget cuts would happen if a deal couldn’t be reached. As Paul Krugman said, these cuts were “designed to be stupid. The whole point was, this was supposed to be a doomsday device that would force the parties to reach an agreement. Of course, they didn’t, and here it goes.”

It’s been amusing to watch conservatives pleading and groveling to spare the Pentagon from any budget cuts. Since these defense cuts have made us so helpless and vulnerable, there’ll probably be a terrorist attack any minute now.

Making these budget cuts across the board is the only way to do it. Any dimwit could balance the budget overnight by just deleting those programs he/she doesn’t like.

The first sequester casualty: the Blue Angels might be getting their wings clipped. I saw them perform in downtown San Francisco a long time ago. Thrilling to watch, but a little nerve-wracking seeing them dart between and among the skyscrapers. Occasionally the San Francisco Chronicle would print a letter pointing out the danger of having jets swooping so close to skyscrapers. And there were always a few responses to the effect of “You F#%$&! pansy!” “You hate Freedom!”

And a Chronicle columnist once wrote that the Blue Angels were so loud, they almost drowned out the rap music coming from somebody’s car stereo.

8 Comments:

What could've and should've happened is for Obama to tell Boehner, "OK, enough. What say I drop trying to get tax loopholes for the rich closed for now, and you give up on entitlement cuts for now. Let's repeal the sequester measure and continue with the status quo of taxes and spending until unemployment has stayed below 6 percent for nine months. Then, we can go back to bargaining."

Of course, that would have required Boehner to have the cojones to tell his tea party crazies to sit down and shut up, go for counseling, or something like that.

I read somewhere that if we kept only defense and social security and eliminated the rest of the federal government, we would still run a budget deficient. Any numbskull should be able to figure out that we both budget cuts AND income to turn things around but still we've got these morons spouting their ideology. Our only hope if for enough people to figure out what's going on and vote these asses out of office. But I'm not holding my breath over it.

Social Security is not part of the budget. It is not funded out of the General Fund, and does not add to the debt or deficit. SS is entirely funded out of the payroll deduction. It should not even be part of the budget/ deficit discussion.

It seems that Bonehead has a reserved seat on the tea party bus so there'll be no negotiating there.

But what people fail to look at is that none of the rules for Wall Street have been instituted. You will also note that the market is above 14,000 as it was before the last crash. With this sequester people will pull back on spending if they haven't already. So you may think this is good but it's not. Laying off more people isn't going to get the economy going any more the an anorexic can starve themselves fat. And it's always those at the bottom who suffer the most.